Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha

While Einhart is a descendant of Claus Ingvalt, she stands out as, like you said, having Genetic Memory, which gives her Claus's attributes (silvery green hair, heterochromia, Kaiser Arts). Okay, I'm aware that's not how genetics work, but that's what my headcanon tells me anyway, so that's about it.

She also lives in what appears to be a spacious apartment unit as shown in the manga. Even in the later chapters that I've read, there was no mention of Einhart's family. So, either she's a rich orphan like Mami Tomoe, which makes kind of sense since she is a descendant of a Belkan king, or her family is not so important enough to warrant any mention. The latter is odd considering that as members of the Ingvalt house, Einhart's family should be a prominent figure in modern Mid-childa.

It gets weirder in the fact that Einhart introduces herself as "Heidi E.S Ingvalt", even to Nove. She apparently uses "Einhart Stratos" as her civilian name or whatever. Why she chooses to do so is not stated.

Maybe she's using her adult mode to get a job as a waitress or something, hmmm?

Eh? Quite a hard-to-please guy are ya? Well, apparently dual-element conversion is actually not that common of a skill in Nanoha, evidenced by Teana's surprise upon learning this, Also, Elemental Powers do make a difference in Nanoha, evidenced by the fact that Gil Graham's plan was to seal the B.o.D by freezing it before dumping it in a limbo dimension, Fate and Erio's lighting conversion abilities apparently make them faster, and Corona uses earth to make Goliath. Rio's ability comes as less impressive because fire and lighting are not very effective against a stone golem.

edited 22nd Nov '15 2:05:42 PM by Hoki

Re Signum:

I think she outright states that she sucks at diplomacy and talking to people.

Re Chrono's style:

I think his thing is doing a lot with relatively little/low magical power, so it's possible that he can do stuff with ambush situations and versatility in quickly-changing situations. Some sort of master tactician sort of person. Would also make him well-suited for his role as an enforcer.

edited 22nd Nov '15 2:55:21 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

The thing about hard-to-learn skills being impressive is that it requires them to have been previously established as hard to learn so that it doesn't come as a surprise that it's not something anyone could learn. Being told a skill is hard to learn when it comes up means you're learning both facts at the same time, and they sort of cancel each other out, since the contrary nature makes you second guess them and their place in the story.

On the other hand, if there is a skill already established something only the elite can even begin to try to learn, the audience already knows that when someone comes along and shows she can actually do that. That makes it much harder (or less plausible) to second guess yourself regarding how difficult it is, which increases the likelihood of accepting the character as badass for pulling it off.

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The main characters are very much line soldiers in mentality; put fire on the problem until it goes away.

Chrono uses binds, superior tactical positioning, speed and surprise, and the supporting resources of a Bureau starship (usually teleportation and its ability to gather intelligence without necessarily alerting enemy mages it's watching) to force the enemy to react to you and in knowing how they will react force their surrender. He's SWAT or military counterterror; speed, surprise, the right tools for the job, and make order from chaos.

edited 22nd Nov '15 3:37:10 PM by Night

Nous restons ici.

"That's a nice face you got there, be a shame if anything happened to it. Have I mentioned that I can punch trained martial artists through brick walls? Anyway, about that generous donation you were about to make to me of your own free will..."

Pretty much, yeah. I'm leaning more toward the "rich orphan" thing, given how her family hasn't even gotten so much as a passing mention, but it's honestly more that the subject doesn't come up because the story doesn't really care.

I get that being able to use more than one element is rare, but I'm not seeing it have a big effect in combat. There's never been any discussion about the relative benefits of one element over another, for example. No one's said anything like, for example, "Fate manifests lightning, which helps her launch quicker strikes, but Signum's fire means that her blows are more powerful." That's not to suggest that elements don't do anything, but the difference between a lightning-infused attack and a fire-infused attack doesn't seem to amount to much, so the ability to use both is more "that's kinda neat, I guess" instead of "wow, that's a really useful skill!".

It's also not clear if dual-elements is rare because it's a difficult ability that takes a lot of skill to master, or because it's an inherent ability that not many people are born with. Given that Rio's not been shown to be especially skilled at any other aspect of magic, I'm leaning toward the latter, which means it makes about as much sense to be impressed with Rio for being able to use two different elements as it does to be impressed with Vivio for having two different colored eyes.

edited 22nd Nov '15 3:40:07 PM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Thought of the moment:

Zesty Italian Grangeitz

On Rio: I think, that, Rio is special because she has inherent talent to naturally learn and master both elements. Tea could do it because she's just plain too stubborn to not learn it, and I guess she can't really do big things with it. While Rio, potentially, can.

My headcanon tells me that Rio's skill isn't really "rare" as "easy enough that anybody can do it if they wanted to." Mages can choose to have an accompanying element in their magic, should they choose to do so. Vivio, for example, can use lighting magic, but she's not really "aligned" with the lightning element. Hayate has varied elemental nukes on her disposal, but chooses to use ice and non-elemental spells like Diabolic Emission. Long story short, elemental magic is more of a gimmick for mages. Especially in Vivid, where mages are fighting for sport, thus need a certain theme for them to be recognized by people. Rio chose to have two elemental magic so she'll stand out in team Nakajima seeing as Vivio has iridescent magic color (rare as in only people from the Sank Kaiser line have it), Corona can animate stuff (she's the only one shown doing something like this so far), and Einhart has skills unique to Kaiser Arts (Cyclonic Wave, basically Catch and Return).

So yeah, other than that there seems to be no practical use for elemental magic in Nanoha... Well save for one instance where Hayate summoned a giant iceberg to stop the villains who have anti-magic.

Mastery of multiple elements is actually very rare.

And Hayate is an exception, because all the spells in the Tome of the Night Sky were stolen from all the mages throughout history who got their linker cores added into the book. i.e. She's cheating.

edited 22nd Nov '15 8:36:50 PM by HanabiraKage

To be fair, it's Hayate. Does anyone really expect anything else out of her?

Chapter 2 of InnocentS translated. Subaru gets some flashy defeats, and the gender confusion continues.

edited 8th Dec '15 7:55:11 AM by arahman56

Yay! Will read soon.

I do not understand how we got from "Subaru" to "reverse trap".

"Yup. That tasted purple."

Because everybody thinks Subaru is a boy, and we are waiting for their inevitable shock when they find out that she isn't.

More specifically, we're all waiting for Tea's reaction to this.

She's already crushing hard enough that she though Subaru was going to confess to her, so that should be fun.

Also, not sure if I like how Fate looks with glasses.

"Yup. That tasted purple."

The glasses also bother me. Maybe if they had no frames...

Or just ditch the glasses

They're already rimless.

"Yup. That tasted purple."

So, I got to explaining Vivid to someone who knows nothing about Lyrical Nanoha. Or, at least, the backstory behind Vivio and Einhart. The conversation went something like this:

The local religion worships the Saint King, who despite being the Saint King, was actually a chick. A chick who was a combination of Jesus (religion based around her), Goku (biggest magic kung-fu badass in the universe), and Oda Nobunaga (started a war to unify her country way back in the day).

Someone took this Jesus Gokunaga chick and cloned her. She now attends school run by the church that worships her, where the casually refer to her as "your majesty". It's like Jesus attending Catholic school, except he could also blow up the school with his magic kung-fu powers if he felt like it. (But it's okay, because so could some of her teachers. And some of her fellow students, even the ones who aren't clones of ancient magic kung-fu badasses. And... look, a lot of people can blow stuff up in Lyrical Nanoha.)

Oh, and one of her friends is basically the reincarnation of the equivalent of Tokugawa Ieyasu (the guy who actually managed to finish unifying Japan after Nobunaga died during the war). Something something distant ancestor, something something genetic memories, something something shut up and go with it. And since it's not Lyrical Nanoha without lesbians, the reincarnation (who is a chick) is totally into the clone (who is also a chick) because the original Tokugawa equivalent (who was a dude) was totally into the original Jesus Gokunaga (who was still a chick).

The moral of the story: Lyrical Nanoha is ridiculous. And hilarious. And awesome.

edited 10th Dec '15 5:25:52 PM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

It probably sounds less ridiculous if you use a term other than "magic kung-fu powers".

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Less ridiculous, but also less accurate. And less awesome. Because magic kung-fu powers are badass.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

You know they're badass because there exists an entire genre about them.

You should've added that the Jesus clone has two moms, one of which is a magical girl gundam.

They both are, simply different Gundams - namely, Nu Gundam and Gundam Deathscythe.

Incidentally, I've been watching the last few episodes of Vivid, and (relevant to a conversation we were having earlier) that finally gave me an example of a Mighty Glacier type fighter. Victoria whatshername Thunder Emperor chick doesn't do any of the acrobatic shenanigans that everyone else does, but she tanks like a champ and hits like a truck when she strikes back.

The Einhart vs Corona fight was surprisingly good. Corona doesn't have the kung-fu skills that Einhart does, but they did a good job of showing her using her abilities in creative ways. I had her pegged as a Glass Cannon with a strong offense via her golems, but no defense to speak of, but she did pretty well for herself. (When Corona woke up with Einhart hovering over her, I wanted to see Corona sucker punch her reflexively. Alas, it was not to be.)

No Ending on the anime, as I was expecting. Guess I'm just waiting for more episodes, then.

Incidentally, I realized that Vivid's soundtrack is actually pretty good. The OP and ED are sort of generic fluffy j-pop that's not really my style, but some of the other stuff I really like.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

You would be best off reading the manga. No announcement on an anime continuation.

edited 11th Dec '15 9:54:59 AM by arahman56